This is precious love

By Ada.

In honour of bell hooks. For the depth and understanding of the spaces community and love [should] occupy in everything we do.

The season 2 finale of of Schitt’s Creek is one of my favourites. It shows the Roses as they begin to accept and embrace the town of Schitt’s in a way the residents did of them. They begin to understand the importance of community and the ways community saves lives and the episode culminates with Precious Love playing as they celebrate. It’s the precious love of community that saved me.

I never really thought much about the intricacies and importance of community before. It was just a thing, like a noncommittal shrug. It didn’t really mean anything to me beyond the abstract. And then I started reading the works of bell hooks a few years ago. She wrote of love as all-encompassing. A living, breathing emotion and feeling that seeps into every aspect of human interaction. Love has a place in everything because it dictates the way we live. She wrote of love and spelled it out in a way akin to the love chapter. And in this love she explores the importance of community.

Her work encourages me to live life. It breathed life back into me, like God making man. Jesus was really spitting when he said man shall not live by bread alone because we can’t.* We’re created for the companionship that community brings. It’s also got me thinking of my beliefs. I don’t understand the relationship that comes with believing and nurturing a belief in God. From what I see, it’s a bit of a messy practice at the moment. But I do believe that the existence of God and the understanding of who he is must come from community. It lies in the way my friends and family restored and revitalised me. The way sitting in silence in the presence of those I love was more than enough to make me feel complete. The ways I was able to exist in these spaces and understand a bit more of who I am. In addition to that, it was the presence of the sun’s light on me that highlighted a level of beauty I forgot about. Days aren’t always bleak and can’t always be spent wasting away. Life can be pretty and glorious and it acts in ways that make you feel good. I felt good!

The baptism of community, of being reborn and refreshed cannot be overemphasised and I’m grateful to those I love, those I have, for pulling me out of what was meant to be a devastating time. I wish I could say it feels this good to be alive all the time, it doesn’t. But it does feel good to know that I will always be okay, especially when I feel like I don’t. Community will always have a place in my life because love must always prevail. This is precious love.

* I’m aware this is not the full verse.